F*CK. As reported by MLB.com, the Twins ace was traded to the Mutts for four prospects: Phil Humber, Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, and Kevin Mulvey. Humber, a pitcher, is ranked as the number 7 prospect for the Mets, and has a chance to make the Twins rotation out of Spring Training. Gomez, the number three prospect, is expected to take over in center for the departed Torii Hunter. Guerra is a pitcher and ranked number 2, only behind Binghamton left fielder Fernando Martinez. He spent the year at high A St. Lucie, and won’t debut for a while. The last player, Kevin Mulvey, is also a pitcher, and ranked fourth. He was at AA and AAA in 2007, but he most likely won’t make the Twins until at least July.

There are only two good points to this transaction: Now the NL All-Stars stand a slight chance, and the Mets mortgaged their future for a pitcher who will garner a $billion contract for life. Let’s hope he only stays for ’08 than bolts back to the AL!

Sh*t. As announced over on Beerleaguer.com, he was signed for 2 years. I can’t find the cash amount, but I will get that to you guys (the readers) soon. WHY?!?!?!?!?!? This guy seriously sucks. Picture Abraham Nunez up at the plate. Then subtract walks. And extra base hits. and normal hits. And add way more outs. But, on the positive, he averages around 20 homers a year and has a goodokay decent glove. Some folks may take the guy in because of this, but I hate it. We need someone who can get on base and be able to protect Howard in the 5th hole. Now, we have a 5th/6th hitter, who strikes out an average of 125 times a year. Now, with him, Burrell, and Howard hitting in some order of 4-5-6, we now have 389 strikeouts in the middle of the lineup. Which gives an average of a little less than 130 strikeouts in the three spots.

Now, let’s focus on his OBP. Or lack there of. The Dominican had an OBP of .290 in 2007, and a career percentage of .288. the highest he ever hit was .305, which was way back in 2004. Although not as important, his average is even worse. He is a career .252 hitter, and he hit .253 last season– on par with his career average, and has a lifetime best of .276, also in the 2004 season. As you can see, his ’04 season was by far his best. He hit .276/.305/.485, and knocked out 22 dingers, also a career best, with 84 RBIs, all while whiffing 84 times.

There are some good points about him, though. He is incredibly versatile (he has played every position on the diamond except pitcher and second base) since his debut, and he “is the guy you want on the field with the game on the line in the 9th inning”, as quoted by Beerleaguer.com. So, he is mostly a defensive solution. This deal also makes Wes Helms more expendable. Unfortunately, he won’t be worth much to any team, so we could only get a half decent prospect, who might not even make it to the bigs.

Towards the future, in two years, Jason Donald, Brad Harman, and Adrian Cardenas will all be ready to take over. Maybe even Greg Dobbs will start by then?

The good folks over at BA made it, shipped it, and today it arrived–the greatest book of all time–The Baseball America Prospect Handbook 2008. It has Jay Bruce of the Louisville Bats (AAA Cincinnati Reds affiliate) on the front in full, with little pictures of Franklin Morales of the Colorado Rockies, Clayton Kershaw of the Jacksonville Suns (AA affiliate of the LA Dodgers), and Cameron Maybin of the Lakeland Flying Tigers (High A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, though he has since been traded to the Florida Marlins for the D-Train and Cabrera) on the right-hand side. the cover features a red and blue color scheme that sort of “melt into each other”, because that is the scheme of the Bats.

Anyways, on to the good parts. It has a neat new feature that shows who the staff thinks is the team’s top 08 rookie (Josh Outman, P was predicted to crack the rotation by midseason), breakout prospect (Freddy Galvis, SS), and the sleeper prospect (Freddy Ballestas, SP). Among other things, it also has the projected lineup for 2011.

“No-Hit” Nunez as they call him over on We Should Be GM’s has signed with the NL Central contenders today. The 31-year-old infielder signed a minor league deal, which means he might not see a Major League fastball for a while. Because it was a minor league deal (as opposed to a major league one), terms were not disclosed. Click for more.

They’re nowhere near as much fun as blogging. I’m just posting this because I need something to keep me awake. I’m so bored with writing. I’ve been at it since yesterday morning. It really is quite annoying. This post is terrible, but I need something to do.

I have it up and running. I’m not paying for ads quite yet, so you have to tell your friends about it. Here is the link. It is also on the left-hand side bar with the rest of the links. Still working on the other projects. Right now I have finals, though, so it may take a while.

Sorry I was gone for so long. I got a lot of stuff on my plate. I’ll try my best to keep posting, but it is ever the challenge right now. Here’s a list of things I plan to do in the future relating to this blog:

I plan to start another blog on baseball in general (as opposed to specifically the Phillies). It will probably be on Blogspot, if only because I want to test out the differences.

I have decided to put the Phillies Wiki site project on hold for the time being. It is too time consuming, and doing this kind of stuff is incredibly tricky to get right. I don’t know when (or if) I will bring the project back. If anyone out there wants to help out, drop me a line, or you can leave a comment on this post.

It’s a long one today. These are the future 25-man rosters for the team through 2013, and only have players in the farm system, so that is why there are no free agent acquisitions on the teams. For the key, players underlined are leaving free agents after the year, and players that are italicized are new to the team, or rookies.

–Update–For the purpose of saving space, I have moved the rest of this post below the fold.

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. A little bit late, but, nonetheless, here they are: The “block” set of new jerseys for the Philadelphia Phillies. Jerseys and hats are from the same place as last time, so get the link there. I’ll update the logo later, when I’m not so tired.

I felt that the Phillies current uniforms are quite bland. I do not like them. In addition, I was browsing through blogs that tagged “Phillies”, and I came upon this, and he said that the Phils ran out of ideas for uniforms. Go read it. In response to this, I have created two new sets of unis, which I will roll out today and (hopefully) tomorrow. The first set is called “Classic”, because, except for the new alternate, these jerseys look very similar to the current ones. There are not many changes between the current kits and the new ones. The new logo is below. It looked nicer on my computer, which decided to eat it.

The jersey bases were borrowed from here, and the hats from here. I made this all in Paint, believe it or not. Click to view them.(more…)